[The 90’s Election Specials raw: Vincent Van Gogh sale, Tony Fitzpatrick]

Raw tape for The 90's election specials. This tape covers an highly attended auction of a recently discovered Vincent Van Gogh painting, which eventually sells for over a million dollars. Then, videomaker Pat Creadon visits artist Tony Fitzpatrick in his studio.

00:00Copy video clip URL Patrick Creadon goes to an auction house in Chicago where a recently discovered Vincent Van Gogh painting is about to be auctioned off. Creadon tapes the press and large crowd beforehand and then the auction itself. A woman talks about the auction house’s commission. The auction is quite crowded. Press from ABC explains to Creadon the story of the painting, which was discovered in a house in Wisconsin, and talk to Creadon about the Hi-8mm video format.

18:00Copy video clip URL Leslie Hindman, who runs the auction house, begins the auction by thanking all her staff and explaining the logistics.

23:57Copy video clip URL The tape cuts, skipping the artwork up until the Van Gogh. The bidding on the Van Gogh begins, and quickly escalates from $500,000. The painting itself is barely visible. Creadon instead focuses on a man on the phone, who bids $1,200,000. The painting sells for $1,300,000.

28:43Copy video clip URL Creadon visits Chicago artist Tony Fitzpatrick in his studio, where he is working on a piece called “The Coming Of The Locusts,” inspired by Albert Camus’ “The Plague.” After reading this book many years ago, it generated in Fitzpatrick a lingering interest in the process of fighting something as all-consuming as a plague. Fitzpatrick sees the plague as a metaphor for problems in American culture.

30:50Copy video clip URL After discussing his artwork, Fitzpatrick discusses who he believes would be an ideal president. He expresses a distrust with anyone who actually wants to be president, saying that they’ve all “whored themselves up the food chain” to get where they are. He says that regardless of who is president, it is the multinational corporations who are in charge anyways. “It’s easy to tell you who is president [holds out a dollar bill] – that’s who’s president, no matter who we elect.” “I think Pee Wee Herman should be president. All politicians do the same thing – at least Pee Wee has the decency to do it in the dark.” These quotes are semi-rehearsed, and Fitzpatrick does multiple takes.

37:44Copy video clip URL Tape cuts to another artist, Jonathan Lavan, who says that the whole electoral system should be radically changed, and that a committee of people from all walks of life should choose a president, and whoever they pick should be forced to do the job, especially if they don’t want to. Then Fitzpatrick comes over to act out what Lavan is saying, which mostly involves making vulgar gestures.

40:22Copy video clip URL Fitzpatrick shows Creadon a book on pit bulls and describes how such an innocuous-looking book actually contains information about how to train dogs for fighting – how to keep them mad, how to construct a treadmill, etc. “All these dogs want is love and approval, and they’ll do anything to get it, and pit bull fighters know this.”

47:23Copy video clip URL End of tape.